When Valve created Xen, technical and time limitations had an impact on how it looked. We want the borderworld to feel like a place that exists, even if we humans donвЂ™t have the capacity to understand it.' 'In the end we wanted to build a world that is bizarre but contiguous. 'We made the design with these in mind,' says Engels. TheyвЂ™ve all been remade and expanded, and some sections Valve had to cut out were reintroduced. In the original game, what most refer to simply as вЂXenвЂ™ is actually five chapters: Xen, GonarchвЂ™s Lair, Interloper, Nihilanth and Endgame. 'We didn't reinvent the game with our take on Xen, but it's much more than just get key, open door.' 'Valve does a wonderful job of introducing mechanics, letting you get used to it, then using that mechanic in an unexpected way,' says Engels. The Black Mesa teamвЂ™s main goal for Xen was adding the same level of worldbuilding seen elsewhere in Half-Life, while retaining its alien, otherworldly feel. 'We can tell you from our own experience that taking your game to a new world is more challenging than it looks on paper.'

'We see a lot of support for the old Xen on our Steam forums.' The consensus in the community, he adds, is that Valve ran out of time and wasnвЂ™t able to iterate on the alien levels like they did with the rest of the game. 'I think the dislike of those levels might have grown in our minds as time has gone on,' he says. WeвЂ™ve been using Google Docs recently and theyвЂ™ve been a huge help.'Д®ngels thinks history has been crueller to Xen than it deserves. 'We try to schedule a few meetings or playtests where everyone can get involved. 'We try and use chat to work out specific problems, then use forums to document what we talked about so we can refer to it later.' Time zones are one of the biggest hurdles for such a disconnected team, and itвЂ™s basically impossible to get everyone together at once. 'We use chat programs and online forums,' says Engels. The team doesnвЂ™t work in one office, which can make orchestrating such a huge project difficult.

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